Bone Marrow Transplantation

Three types of bone marrow transplantation procedures are available

Autologous transplant – here blood cells are collected from the patient, frozen and then stored. Usually, this is a pre-chemotherapy process. Based on patient’s condition doctor suggests the perfect time slot to collect these cells from a patient’s body. After chemotherapy or any other radiation processes, the stored cells are gives back to the patient’s body. This process is called rescue transplant.

One can preserved his/her cells in lab for days, months or even years too. Doctors will store them until the patient need those cells for their transplantation.

Allogeneic transplant– In this case doctors collect cells or blood cells from a donor. The donor can be a family member or someone else who doesn’t have any relation to the patient. But this is important to find someone whose bone marrow matches to patient’s marrow.

Umbilical cord blood transplant – This is also similar to allogeneic transplant, but in this case, these cells or bone marrow is collected from a newly born baby. In this process cells are collected from newly born baby’s umbilical cord right after birth. Then cells are frozen and stored until they are required for a transplantation.

After chemotherapy or radiation, these cells are given back to the patient’s bloodstream with a central venous catheter tube. The process is quite similar to blood transfusion, injected blood cells travel from blood to bone marrow. Surgery might not be compulsory for this process.